Are you looking for a meaningful volunteer experience? Apply to help in Botswana! You’ll get to give back and help worthwhile local causes including community, education, wildlife and conservation projects. Benefits include getting to live in spectacular settings, integrating with local people and getting to travel and see more of the country in your free time.
Reasons to Volunteer in Botswana
• Botswana is a vast country differing from any other in Africa
• There are amazing attractions ranging from the Okavango to the Kalahari
• It is a peaceful and stable country
• The people are friendly and welcoming
• The government is supportive, encouraging high-value tourism and voluntourism
• Volunteers benefit because the ecology is unique, protected and exclusive
Help Animals
Botswana has some of Africa’s last great wildernesses including the famous Okavango Delta, the Kalahari desert and its rich wildlife. There are lots of animal conservation projects which offer a really unique way to experience Botswana.
Botswana’s tourist ecology is more diverse than any other African country. Some of Africa’s most impressive game and birdlife can be found in the Okavango delta, along the majestic waterways or across the giant Kalahari. Most human habitation and farming is concentrated in the east; this leaves the rest of the land area free for animals.
More than a third of the whole country is dedicated to wildlife conservation. Game is not restricted to the national parks and reserves but can roam freely between official reserves and the huge private concession areas that surround them. Volunteer organisations do everything they can to preserve the ecology and animals entrusted to them.
About Botswana
In the 16th century the Tswana speaking Bantu cattle herders arrived in Botswana, absorbing the earlier people and living a peaceful existence with animals. Tswana kings later secured protectorate status for their people, which insulated them from much of the turmoil that afflicted neighbouring South Africa.
This peace is characteristic of Botswana today, while some of its neighbours are still suffering from social and political upheaval and war. Botswana is a safe destination; an oasis of peace and tranquillity.
Botswana, with its population of only 1.5 million, has enjoyed stable and democratic government since it gained independence from Britain in 1966 under Sir Seretse Khama, its first president. His Botswana Democratic Party has held power continuously since independence. Under his benevolent presidency and that of his successors, the country discovered its immense diamond riches, which have been progressively exploited in the post-independence decades.
This has made Botswana into one of the most prosperous economies anywhere in Africa, with the standard of living of the people multiplying many times. Economic dependence on the diamond industry has prompted the government to diversify the economy and give its wholehearted support to sustainable, up-market tourism.
Government policy is to encourage high-value, low-density tourism while protecting its animals and environment. It also wants local communities to benefit directly from tourism in their areas so that they can appreciate the advantages that tourism brings. It aims to bring the greatest possible net social and economic benefit to the Batswana people while preserving the scenic beauty, the wildlife, the local ecology and culture.
Hence the government expectation that investors in lodges and camp sites cooperate with the local communities by assisting them with projects that are of direct benefit to the local people.
The people of Botswana are very friendly towards tourists and understand the advantage of protecting their animals and environment though their interests as cattle farmers often conflict with the free movement of game over more than a third of the surface of the country.
The local people have given increasingly large areas of their tribal land to wildlife management. The wife of the late Chief Moremi III dedicated part of the Moremi Game Reserve, containing a third of the Okavango delta, to conservation in 1963. More land was dedicated to the reserve in 1970 and 1991. In 1971 tribal land was surrendered in another part of the country to establish the Khutse Game Reserve. This was recognition by the local people that cattle encroachment and uncontrolled hunting would otherwise gradually drive out the animals from an ecologically sensitive area.
FAQ
Application Dates
All year round.
Requirements
18+ unless participating with a group.